A tragic view

Fritz Lang's American films start off as if they had no beginning, as if something
had been decided on and launched inexorably, in our absence, and we were astonished
witnesses to its final explosion. In medias res, the expression used in narrative
theory to describe the entrance of the reader or spectator in fictions that are
underway is, to all intents and purposes, insufficient and imprecise since the point
here is not that actions are activated, but rather that the end is imminent. Thus,
the furious pace, the climax, the intensity that the first Langian scenes often have.
As if we were at the same time expelled from comprehending and plunged into
the maelstrom of events. The content of these actions is, in addition, terminal:
violent murders, accidental deaths, hopeless traumas and, as a result, their
staccato pace has little to do with the gradual, calm introits in the Am...
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Fritz Lang's American films start off as if they had no beginning, as if something
had been decided on and launched inexorably, in our absence, and we were astonished
witnesses to its final explosion. In medias res, the expression used in narrative
theory to describe the entrance of the reader or spectator in fictions that are
underway is, to all intents and purposes, insufficient and imprecise since the point
here is not that actions are activated, but rather that the end is imminent. Thus,
the furious pace, the climax, the intensity that the first Langian scenes often have.
As if we were at the same time expelled from comprehending and plunged into
the maelstrom of events. The content of these actions is, in addition, terminal:
violent murders, accidental deaths, hopeless traumas and, as a result, their
staccato pace has little to do with the gradual, calm introits in the American films
of the classical period. Some random examples illustrate such comments.